


Cradling Someone In Their Arms

by icewhisper



Series: Holiday Cheer & Tears [24]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 16:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17145326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: They’d called the baby Snart.





	Cradling Someone In Their Arms

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place at Last Refuge and goes through Legacy, so... I mean, you all know what happens in Legacies, so canonical major character death, but no one you're not expecting (even if we all live in denial)???

They’d called the baby Snart.

The other guy – the one Mick was pretty sure was _him_ – called the skinny guy with the gun on his leg Len.

The ship – the actual fucking _space ship_ – said they were in 1972 before the girl in the nurse’s uniform had dropped a baby in his arms.

_“You better not drop my future criminal partner.”_

Mick looked down at the baby in his arms, tiny and new the way his siblings had been once, and knew it was Lenny Snart he was looking at. Lenny Snart before his mom had died and his dad had gotten even worse. Before the beatings and the twitchy fingers and the scars.

“You want me to take him?” the girl – Sara, he thought – asked.

He pulled Len tighter towards him. “I’ve got him.”

She stepped closer, hands behind her back, and leaned over. “He’s cute.”

“He’s a pain,” Mick muttered. “Always thinks he’s right, even when he’s being insane.”

But Len _had_ been right. He’d told Mick it had been too hot lately, that if he was going to set his fires, he should do it by the old barn his dad had been planning to tear down anyway. Mick had told him to fuck off, that he knew fire better than Len and his collection of library books did. His family had died for it, burned and choked on smoke until their bodies couldn’t take it anymore.

His parents.

The little kids.

He’d…

His breath hitched and the baby wailed like he knew Mick was upset. Sara said he was hungry and rushed off to talk to the ship about getting a bottle, but Mick shifted him, pulling Len up to lie on his chest, little head cradled under his chin, and the crying stopped.

Len was quiet again, dozing back off and comforted by Mick and his-

His clothes smelled like smoke.

He wondered if Len could smell the death on him too, clinging to him like the guilty verdict that would get slapped on him if he ever made it back to his own time.

He should put him down, he thought, lay him down in the little bassinet someone had brought in and keep Len safe from him. He was too innocent right now. Mick couldn’t tarnish that. He wasn’t sure how he’d even face his Len if he ever got back.

How he’d face Lisa and tell her he’d killed her best friend.

His back hit the wall as his knees gave out and he slid down towards the floor.

With a too-young Len held to his chest, he cried.

 

 

The other him talked to him about the flames.

The other Len spoke to him exactly once as they were getting ready to leave them behind at the Refuge. He laid the smaller him back in Mick’s arms and was halfway out the door when Mick spoke up and asked, “Why didn’t you leave?”

Len turned back to look at him, one shoulder leaned up against the doorframe and arms crossed over his chest. “Why ask?” he questioned instead of answering. “You won’t remember this when you go back to your time.”

“I’d know _now_ ,” Mick said. “You’re still with me and he’s got even more burns than I do. The fire is still there. I’m still dangerous.”

“We both are,” Len countered, but something on his face looked pained and he started twisting a silver ring on his-

On his left ring finger.

Mick knew that ring.

His breath stopped, wide eyes staring at the ring in the dim lighting of the room. Len followed his gaze to it and hummed like he remembered where they’d been then; awkwardly trying pretend they’d never gone to bed together, because ignoring it was easier than talking about it.

They’d apparently done a lot of talking if there was a ring on Len’s finger now.

“The other me wasn’t wearing one.”

“You never do end up liking jewelry,” Len mused. “He’s got his on a chain.”

Mick nodded slowly, mind reeling with the realization. “You… You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Didn’t I?” Len gave him the flash of a grin and left without another word.

He didn’t come back.

Mick knew when the other him walked in with that look on his face – grief, it was grief – and couldn’t look him in the face as he lifted Len out of the bassinet. He cradled the baby to his chest, breathing shaky before it seemed to dissolve into something that sounded like it wanted to be a sob.

“What happened?” he asked the older him, voice cracking. He couldn’t lose Len too, not even a future one. He _couldn’t_. Not so soon after his family and not at all.

But Mick shook his head and handed the baby over. “We gotta take you both back.”

Back to his time and the cops and the fire and a Len that apparently wouldn’t leave him, but who he didn’t know how to face yet. He opened his mouth to argue, to say he wasn’t ready, but Len fussed in his arms and he remembered.

He’d be going back to the Len he knew.

Len would be going back to Lewis and a mother who would be dead in a few years.

“Do we have to take him back?” he asked, but the look the older Mick gave him said he knew better than to ask that. Not returning him meant the Len he knew would never happen and he was too selfish to give him up.

He wondered what that said about him.

 

 

They brought him back to the field after they’d dropped everyone else back in their own time. He’d said goodbye to a Len that was too young to remember him and never said goodbye to the one who had married him.

He really missed his Len with his pointy elbows and twitchy fingers. He missed his _puns_.

“Ready?”

Mick turned back to look at who he’d become and took a deep breath. “One more question,” he said and didn’t wait for permission before he asked, “Was it us? Did we get him killed?”

Jaw clenched and eyes closed, the other him nodded.

His chest _ached_. “Do it.”

There was a flash of light and he was alone, staring down at the charred remains of his family’s house and trying to remember how long it had been.

The End


End file.
